Past Exhibitions

Gauguin and Polynesia: An Elusive Paradise

Feb 9 – Apr 29 2012

Seattle Art Museum

Simonyi Special Exhibition Galleries

Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) is one of the true larger-than-life figures in art history. The key feature in his personal mythology is the constant yearning for an exotic paradise. He sought it in the bohemian arts community at Pont-Aven on the coast of Brittany and later on the South Seas island of Tahiti. When that outpost of French colonialism began to feel too constraining, Gauguin moved to a still more remote location, the Marquesas Islands, where he died in 1903. His fascination with local cultures resulted in a kind of personal, syncretic iconography throughout his career.

Past exhibitions have addressed Gauguin’s involvement with other cultures in a fairly superficial way. Through a balanced contextual analysis of Polynesian art alongside Gauguin’s works, this exhibition brings Polynesian arts and culture into the center of Gauguin studies. The show will display about 60 works by Gauguin (paintings, sculpture, works on paper) that fully reveal the extent of the influence of Polynesian art and culture on his work. It will also highlight about 60 works from the Pacific that exemplify the dynamic exchanges of Pacific Island peoples with Europeans throughout the nineteenth century. In contrast to earlier exhibitions, which included Pacific objects primarily as a kind of visual background to Gauguin’s development as a modern European artist, the exhibition and its innovative approach promise new insights into the relationship between Gauguin’s art and Polynesian art.

–Chiyo Ishikawa, Susan Brotman Deputy Director for Art and Curator of European Painting and Sculpture, with Pam McClusky, Curator of Art of Africa and Oceania